The Findings of Miss Jane Porter
by Kit Koko
Summary: Jane Porter documents her reasoning behind leaving England to live with Tarzan, the Ape Man, and her father in the central African jungles. (One-Shot)


They told me women weren't made to be scientists. I was teased throughout my schooling and well into adulthood. I desperately wanted to go to university, but no one would admit me. The women at my family's parties would laugh as if my life's dream was one big practical joke I had devised simply for their amusement. The men chuckled to themselves and pat me on the head whenever I brought it up.

"I'm sorry Jane," one man once said to me, "but women aren't meant for such intellectual endeavors. It's scientifically impossible! You see, a woman's brain is physically incapable of apprehending such things. It's completely out of her sphere!"

They only gave me the time of day because Daddy was a well-known anthropology professor in Oxford. He contributed to the study of the "Neanderthal" man when he was at university himself. This inspired his career in primatology. His discoveries greatly attributed to the Porter family's wealth, so since I was to inherit thousands, I could say whatever I liked. The worst reaction I would illicit would be a spirited argument.

I had heard of women around the world being put to death for pursuing science, so I was grateful for my position. For this reason alone, I tolerated the verbal abuse. However, it became cumbersome when I wanted the university to fund an expedition to Central Africa. I received the same answers that the pompous young men at my parents' parties had given me. I was a woman! How silly of me to propose such a drastically intellectual "vacation." I told them it wouldn't be a vacation, but an educational expedition. I wanted to study gorillas. I had wanted to since I was young.

"Well, Miss Porter," the director began, "I'm afraid there is no need to send a woman in to do a man's job. That would be an enormous waste of the university's funds. Women were simply designed for, uh, different tasks. We need proper young ladies such as yourself to raise our strapping young boys! Perhaps that young boy you raise will one day be able to go on these dangerous trips in your stead. He'll have the education and capacity to understand more than you, anyways."

I knew there was no arguing with them, so I nodded my head, smiled the way my mother would when she was planning something malicious, and left. I told Daddy my dreams and, with much enthusiasm, he agreed to both accompany me and finance the expedition. Gender never seemed to be an issue to him, not when there were dreams to live. Before we knew it, we had arranged a boat and a guard to come with us. His name was William Clayton. He assured us that he knew Africa like the back of his machete, which made me wary but seemed to be enough for my father.

"I've waited thirty years for this, Jane," Daddy told me with wonder in his eyes. "I thought I had been waiting for a sign, but now I know that I've been waiting for someone like you. Someone strong and determined to tell me to stop waiting and take life by the—oh well, you know what I mean!" He chuckled. "Honestly, you and I are going to make history, love!"

So, there I was, finally aboard a ship headed to another country, let alone a new continent. All the men back home had only seen me as a potential wife and mother and nothing more. Some simple saw me as a good breeder, like they were on the search for the perfect specimen to mate with their prize-winning racehorses. Well, I would show them. I would find the gorillas and study them, just as my father had done wanted to do for years. He was just as excited as I was, teaching me how to properly document sightings of gorillas, scan an area for nests, and even how to analyze my biological results when we would return to the labs in England.

I didn't much want to go back, though. We docked and set up camp the moment we got there, and as I watched the ship head back out into the sunset, I prayed that time would move slowly. We had one month before the boat would return. I had to see the gorillas by then. Just one would satisfy me. I would have the research, my father to back it up, the samples—I would finally be respected. No more, "Women can't do research," or "Women simply aren't capable of thinking, let alone learning." I would show them all.

And then I met him. He was the greatest discovery of all. We had come to Africa in hopes of backing up Daddy's theory about gorilla "societies" and "families," and here was a man who had been raised by them. His eyes were so fierce yet gentle and innocent when he looked at me. I would say something and he would repeat it with this childlike wonder and enthusiasm. He reminded me of, well, me when I was child, eager to learn, to know, and to understand.

He tossed me toward vines and trees with this confidence in me that I didn't even have for myself. I wasn't a lady to him, a creature without a brain that needed to be silent at all times—I was a teacher, a safeguard, a friend. He never looked at me like I needed to be saved. He made me feel wild and free. Daddy remarked one evening how I reminded him more and more of my mother. I giggled, trying to picture my upright, respectable mum swinging from vine to vine like a chimpanzee. She had passed away from smallpox when I was nine, but I never forgot what she looked like. Daddy kept hundreds of pictures of her around the house and would talk about her for hours. She was never truly dead to him and because of that, neither was she to me.

Tarzan didn't understand manners or social cues. There was something to that, though. Sure, he didn't recognize which fork was for dinner and which was used for salads, but he knew what kindness was, what loyalty looked like. He knew how to be gentle with those dear to him and how to be ferocious toward threats. And he looked at me with such honest curiosity and desire that I wished to stay with him always, staring back into those jungle-green eyes.

But when he asked me to stay, I couldn't say yes. I couldn't let go of that need to prove to those men back in England how smart I was. I wanted to be written down in the books as the first woman to study these beautiful creatures. Even if I hadn't gotten to study them as much as I had hoped, I still had something. I had gone and I had survived. Just wait 'til those pompous chauvinists heard about my achievements.

Yet, none of these victories seemed as glossy as they had been when I first arrived.

"Daddy and I were wondering," I started. Backtracking, I corrected myself with, "Well, _I_ was wondering … if you would to come with us. With me, that is. To England."

Tarzan stood up straighter and looked up at the sky, emulating the same position Mr. Clayton took whenever he would think. "Go to England today, come home tomorrow!"

I bit my lip. "Oh, oh no," I replied with great difficulty. "I'm afraid it's a bit more complicated than that."

But it was no use; he wouldn't come with me. He wasn't a gentlemen and I wasn't a gorilla. We both stared at each other and I believe that was the moment we realized we would never belong anywhere. He needed to be here with his family, but he was not an ape. I needed to be home with my father, but I was not a lady. Somehow, though, when we loaded up the ship, Tarzan was there, clad in an old-fashioned black suit.

"Where on earth did you get that?" I laughed.

Instinctively, he reached for my hand. "My father," he replied with his casually haunting intensity.

I was stunned to silence.

Mr. Clayton cleared his throat and Tarzan smiled, thinly. "England?"

I smiled back, but the pull at my lips seemed forced as well. "England."

Then Clayton betrayed us. The moment we had been lifted into the boats, ruthless men seized us. One particularly grubby brute raked his fingers up my torso and towards my bosom, as if it was his right to simply because he was a man stronger than me. I scratched my nails across his face, drawing blood. He threw me against a metal pole and had the rest of the men tie me up.

I kept screaming his name. "Tarzan! Tarzan, help!"

But they had gotten him too, and we were thrown into the cold, metal brig. Tarzan lashed out, frantic, truly like a wild animal in a cage. He threw himself from wall to wall, banging on the metal and hollering like a true gorilla. I rushed toward him and reached out my hand, but he snarled back at me. I knew this wasn't who he was—it was just how he was raised. Still, I was spooked.

His eyes seemed to apologize and, as if to excuse his actions, he growled, "Clayton."

I narrowed my eyes. "Yes. Clayton betrayed us all."

Then, for the first time since I had met him, I saw the wonder and excitement about life fade from his intense gaze. It was like he had never witnessed such brutality before. Coming from the city, it wasn't at all rare to see people go back on their promises and let down their followers. For Tarzan, though, I could see that this was the worst sin of all in his eyes. He had no doubt seen animals kill each other and rip apart each other's bodies, but to see someone go back on his word like this seemed…more horrible than words could express.

Without uttering another word, I learned more about the social behaviors of gorillas than I could have ever learned from a book.

Even when we escaped, I couldn't find that innocent wonder anymore. All I saw was a ravenous need for revenge and justice. But Tarzan wasn't ready to kill. I doubt anyone truly is. He chased Clayton deep into the jungle, and by the time I caught up to him, Clayton was swinging from a vine, the plant wrapped around his neck like a noose and his body lifeless. Tarzan was like stone, staring helplessly up at the poacher like somehow he regretted Clayton's death.

Everything I had wanted for myself back in England seemed so small after that. I had desired to earn the respect of all these people I never cared about. I had spent my life dressing extravagantly to impress the swarms of women who truly never had a better thought in their minds than the type of wine they would have with their meals. I had wanted so much for myself yet what would I do with it once I got home? Would all of this work mean anything? Even if I got my name in the books, what would happen to Tarzan and his family? What would happen if more poachers came?

Who would I have left to love the way I ever did Tarzan?

The morning after, the boat awaited us once more. The real crew had been untied and was set to sail. They sent a small dinghy out to fetch us. I reached out my hand to Tarzan to say goodbye, but Tarzan never did understand social cues. He reached out his hand as well but curled his fingers to line up with mine. My heart yearned to stay, but something in my silly head tugged me the other direction. I'm not quite sure what—my pride, perhaps. Before I could change my mind, I fled to the rowboat.

We were halfway to the ship and halfway gone from Tarzan, when I started to put my spare gloves on. I felt a chasm forming in my heart. I stared down as my hand disappeared behind the cloth, the same way my true self had once disappeared into England.

I sighed and my father took my hand. "Jane, dear," he started with a tentative smile. "I can't help feeling like you should stay."

"No, Daddy, we've been through this," I retaliated, grappling for reasons to go and pulling at my clothes. "I couldn't possibly s-! I-I belong in England with you, with-with people, and-"

Then my glove flew off my hand and into the tropical wind. Like my heart pulling for something familiar, the soft fabric traveled back to Tarzan. He bent down to pick it up, rubbed the cloth carefully between his fingers, then looked up at me. His eyes were large and wide, like an abandoned puppy.

"But you love him," Daddy said, softly, a grin spreading across his face.

He was right and it scared me how this thought had never hit me so hard before. I did love him. I loved Tarzan, the Ape Man. I wasn't falling for some dashing young aristocrat with coat tails and money. I wasn't making plans to become a quaint little wife in stuffy old England. I was meant to live without borders or rules. I wasn't meant for a life in puffy dresses and white gloves—I was meant for a life in the trees.

A life with Tarzan.

So, that's why I jumped off the boat. That's why I abandoned all that fantasized glory that I was most likely never going to get. I didn't want to live with such people who I constantly needed to appease to earn their limited respect. I didn't have the stamina for that. That's why I swam toward him with all my might. That's why I stumbled over him and pulled him toward me with reckless abandon. I didn't need to hide who I was anymore.

I'm neither a girl nor lady. I'm Jane Porter. I have now learned the difference.


End file.
